Legacy Giving: Leave a Legacy of Faith and Music

LSM Legacy Supporter Pamela Smith

Lutheran Summer Music is periodically featuring legacy donors, generous individuals and couples who have included LSM in their estate plans. Starting off the series is Pamela Smith of Lakeland, Florida, who explains why she suppports LSM.

Music, especially classical music, was not a part of my Mom's and Dad's childhood experiences.   They grew up on small dairy farms in western Wisconsin; they were hard-working middle-class people who knew how to just make ends meet.  Yet somehow they had come to love music. When I was a child we went to the Minneapolis Symphony. I remember hearing Arthur Rubinstein play Chopin – more than once – and saw and heard Andre Kostelanetz conduct. Before long, at great sacrifice, Mom and Dad bought a piano on one of those "rent to own" plans so that I could begin piano lessons.

While in junior high school, I started to play the violin on a beginners' instrument from Schmitt Music, and weekly private lessons became part of my routine. As I developed, my teacher finally sold me her violin, and Mom and Dad started taking me to orchestra rehearsals every week in Minneapolis when, after auditioning, I was accepted into the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra.

Mom and Dad gave me so much–instruments, lessons, rosin, sheet music, strings, but most significantly support and encouragement. There is not a day that goes by that I don't hear in my mind’s “ear” a melody that I had performed or finger a melody with the fingers of my left hand on my right forearm or remember when I played Beethoven's Second in MYO.

Lutheran Summer Music is part of my estate plans for several reasons. As a retired pastor, I know firsthand the dearth of church musicians and see that the program is helping train young people for this important part of ministry. LSM offers a unique experience in the residential setting that it uses, and models what it looks like to be part of a community of faith. Finally, the high caliber of faculty members and instructors assures quality teaching.

God has blessed me with a wonderful life of music, ministry and love. The gifts I offer are in honor and respect of my parents who gave me so much, in the hope that other young people may experience the same. 

Please consider joining Pamela by including Lutheran Summer Music in your estate plans.